Shortly after Steve Bannon laid out his vision of nationalism and the deconstruction of government on the first day of CPAC, I was writing a story over a beer at the National Press Club.

On the television was Sean Spicer who said the regime would likely start enforcing federal anti-pot laws in states that had voted for recreational marijuana. Nevermind that he had just invoked “state’s rights” as a rationale for refusing to protect trans students. Nevermind, that world-class racist Jeff Sessions would be the one to enforce this. Or the fact that we all need medical marijuana to deal with the insanity of having an incipient authoritarian in the oval office. But Spicer cited the opioid crisis to justify a crackdown.

At about the same time, Jeff Sessions reversed another Obama administration policy, announcing in a memo that the federal government would actually not cut back on private prisons because, he thinks, our “prison needs” will require them. Private prison stocks soared. But the rest of us thought, “fuck, they want to have even more mass incarceration.”

“Trump seems insistent on throwing the marijuana market back into the hands of criminals, wiping out tax-paying jobs and eliminating billions of dollars in taxes,” executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance Ethan Nadelmann wrote over email.

But I had my own response. I ate a cannabis cough drop while we were in Washington. D.C. where recreational weed is legal, as long as you neither buy nor sell it to get ready for Trump’s speech.

I wanted to personally protest this disastrous decision but I also wanted to make sure I feel the real horror of CPAC here. The best thing about weed is it makes you question your own ethical decisions, often in a devastating fashion.

The result was as horrifying as you might imagine. I tried to tweet some funny shit. But it was not funny. There is nothing funny about it. It is going to be a fucking nightmare. At best, we are ruined by their incompetence, at worst, they actually succeed.

I am a white male and I am horrified by what is happening here. I can’t imagine how it must feel for women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community to know that this is our new reality. I am sorry.

I was sitting in the back as press, which was one of Trump’s main targets because we are still able to question him, even if he refuses to answer. It is clear here: they think we sow discord.

The crowd, of course, loved it when the president attacked us.

“A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people and they are, the enemy of the people," Trump said.

The press, he said “doesn't represent the people, it never will represent the people and we are going to do something about it."

He didn’t say what they planned to do, but he gave some hints.

During Trump’s speech, he said “No one loves the first amendment more than me.” The crowd laughed. It was not intended to be taken seriously, just as, when he said he wanted to protect the environment, he was not booed because that, too, was not a serious statement.

As with both Bolsheviks and Nazis, a speech means one things to members of a movement and something else to those outside of it.

He talked about protecting the flag more than once. I’d guess he’s laying the groundwork to come back to the idea he tweeted in December, threatening to imprison and strip the citizenship from anyone who burns a flag.

As I was tweeting about Trump’s speech, I saw a story on the 17 states passing laws that would prevent protest since Trump’s election.

An hour or so later, Wayne LaPierre said that “violence in the name of politics” is the definition of terrorism. “And those who incite it and engage in it need to be prosecuted and punished, period,” he said speaking specifically of protests on the left.

There’s a thing on the right that protesters are paid $1500 a week. I’ve covered a lot of protests. The protesters are not paid. Hell, I don’t even make $1500 a week as a reporter. But most of these CPACtivists seem pretty well-heeled, so maybe that's where they get the idea.

But, LaPierre's call for prosecution seemed to extend to “the leftist media" which, he said, "is responsible for blowing the winds of violence as well.”

He spoke of the “media’s deliberate lies aimed at destroying our freedom.”

This shit is a constant fucking refrain here. Bannon calling us “the opposition party.” Cracking down on the press is only the first step to cracking down on all opposition.

Trump railed against anonymous sources—notice how he is always citing “a friend,” a “very reliable source” or “everyone” himself—saying we shouldn’t be able to use them. I don’t like anonymous sources either, but with proper vetting, they are essential. Remember Watergate? Pretty good reason to want to stop anonymous sources if you are a secretive and paranoid president.

For that matter, I don’t like most cable news. The “anchors” are assholes because, like Trump, they are essentially reality TV stars.

But it’s not cable Trump hates. He seems obsessed with it. He gave the nod to Fox and Breitbart, without mentioning them, stressing that he did not hate the entire press, only the “dishonest media” or “fake news.” So the stage was set for silencing reports that the president doesn’t like as a way to silence all opposition.

It only took a couple hours. Only hours after Trump's speech, as I was still writing this, the White House banned the New York Times, CNN, and Politico from a scheduled briefing, while allowing Brietbart, Fox, and other conservative outlets to attend. The AP and Time boycotted the briefing in protest.

All of this matters not because we are heroes—me least of all—but because, if we do it right, we can “afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.”

The president and his cronies are pretty comfortable about now. We have a lot of work to do.

These are stoned observations written from inside of CPAC. But I assure you, Mr. President, they are honest. And I am proud to be part of the opposition party.